by V. K. Ludwig
He walked over to the chair, grabbed his shirt, and flung it at me with enough force to make me stumble back. I cleaned his semen off me, then slipped into my shirt and balanced my shaky legs back into my pants.
The moment my hand darted for the handle, he pressed his palm against the door, his chin dropped to his chest as if he had no energy left to look at me. “Look, I’m sorry I called you a bitch, okay? It didn’t mean it. I was just…” He released a sharp breath. “Do you have any idea how beautiful and sexy you are?”
“I am?”
He took his hand off the door and stroked a strand of my hair from my face. “You are, especially with your hair open like that. Give me another chance, and I swear I’ll make it up to you three times over. I promise. Just one more chance.”
“One more chance?”
“I can do a lot better than that. I know I can.”
I hesitated for a moment, looking over his pleading eyes and how his shoulders had slumped by his sides.
“I’ll think about it.”
I opened his door and gazed into the hallway. Left. Right. Clear. I stepped outside and sneaked across the rectangular tiles.
“Hey,” he whispered behind me.
I turned around, only to find a bittersweet smile on his face.
“I get you didn’t really enjoy this and all but… Well, I did, and I want you to know that you fulfilled a dream I figured would never come true for me. Thank you.”
I gave him a quick nod and continued on my way back to my room, the smell and taste of his body clinging to mine. I did enjoy it — while it lasted.
Chapter 8
Adair
The rusty wrought-iron gate slouched against the brick wall of the graveyard. Gravel shifted underneath the snow at each step, and the old church stood covered in vines, the roof of the main ship caved in.
Oriel let his gloves glide over a stone angel, covered is dormant moss. “This place creeps me out. I don’t get why we had to meet here, considering we all usually avoid this place.”
“Because we all usually avoid this place,” Rowan said, planting his ass on one of the crooked headstones, one side of it sunken into the ground by half a foot.
Uncle Peter let his finger trace over the metal plaque by the large cross in the middle. “I didn’t even know this place existed.”
“Rowan is right,” River said. “Nobody ever comes here, so… fewer chances for anyone to sneak up on us.”
We had brought the women, who sat on the flatbed of Rowan’s truck with steaming mugs between their hands and laughter on their lips. Except for Ruth, who had jumped off and now rolled a ball of snow over the ground, its circumference swelling at each push.
Staring at her made embarrassment well up inside of me all over again. It drowned my pride, and whatever expectations I had left of my first time with a woman. The only comfort I could take from that disaster two nights ago was that, if I ever found a wife, I would have learned how not to do it.
The moment she glanced over at me, my shoulders slumped. She carried a one-sided smile on her face, probably full of pity for me and regret for herself. That night could very well have been my only chance at sleeping with a woman, and I exploded forty seconds into it… and not even in the right place.
“You’re too fast,” River’s voice pulled me out of my thoughts, with words that sounded oddly and painfully familiar.
“Huh?”
“Your idea about executing Ben in front of the village,” he said. “I agree it needs to be done, but doing it right away will blow our chances at infiltrating the entire group. It’s like firing a half-cocked rifle.”
I leaned against the fence. “Whatever, River. If you believe you’ve got a better idea, how about you let us hear it?”
“He’s right though,” Max said. “Ben’s execution will make the others more careful because they’ll know we’re on to them.”
“And careful men will try everything to avoid mistakes,” Uncle Peter added.
Rowan planted his legs wide and swung his hands onto his hips, his eyes gazing over us from a lowered head. “Thing is, we need to infiltrate them, but we gotta do it fast. I need this issue dealt with, so we can concentrate on something else that’s been on my mind.”
We all exchanged confused looks. Except for Max, who sat on a crumbling headstone, arms crossed in front of his chest, the tip of his boots shoving the snow around.
“Last night,” Rowan continued, “Hazel confirmed the bone belonged to a woman. Max is sure the cross the scouts found didn’t belong to his dad.”
“At least not that I know,” Max added.
Rowan gave him a dismissive wave. “Anyway, we have enough reason to conclude that we didn’t just find a large burnt area. We think it’s a mass grave.”
Oriel snorted. “How is one bone proof enough to determine it’s a mass grave?”
Max’s and Rowan’s eyes swung to me, and the others soon followed, turning the wind which rustled through the graves into something that sounded like long-silenced prayers.
“I found a skull,” I said, my voice so deep, the weight of the words must have dragged my vocal cords down. “A small one, like from a child. Trauma to the left side. Looked like blunt force.”
River stuttered a deep release of breath, his eyes glistening as he gazed over his shoulder and over to Ayanna.
Oriel rubbed his palm over his face, then crossed his arms in front of his chest. “Still not enough to make a mass grave. Where’s the rest of them?”
“Adair…” Rowan grumbled.
“I didn’t realize it when I was there but…” My voice trailed off for a second, something narrowing the back of my throat. “Thinking about it now, the ground was way too smooth and level, and I must have dug up the skull when I crawled over the ground to retreat.”
“Wait,” Uncle Peter blurted. “You had to retreat? From what?”
“We don’t know. Men from the Districts? Ash Zones? They came after us at first, but stopped their fire once we turned and headed back north.”
“Why would they stop once you headed north?” River asked.
“What matters right now,” Rowan said, “is that whoever did this must have leveled the ground after. Which is why we considered there might be a lot more to find out there, once we start digging.”
“Digging?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Oriel added. “What do you mean by digging?”
Rowan walked over to one of the fence posts, wrapped his hand around the spike on top and leaned against it, his posture more crumbled than the headstone beside him. “We will go down there and dig up every single bone we can find, bring them back here to this church and give them a proper burial.”
He had delivered the plan without a single trace of hesitation, and we all remained silent for what seemed eons on this graveyard which now smelled even more like grief and mourning.
“They’re not our people,” Oriel whispered.
“But they are people,” Rowan said in a sharp tone, then rubbed his fingers across his eyes. “In a way, I feel responsible for their death. Autumn’s escape. Us going in there to get my wife out… we provoked them. And that skull and that bone are only two of the people who paid for my stupidity.”
Our heads lowered, and nobody spoke a word for a long time, the only sounds piercing the crisp air the giggles coming from our women. Their women… because none of them belonged to me.
“Which brings me back to Ben and those motherfuckers who assume they can kill me,” Rowan said. “I can’t go digging up bones while this issue isn’t resolved. But Max, Darya and I came up with a pretty good plan: an ice-skating event.”
“A what?” River asked.
“An ice-skating event,” Max repeated. “Rowan wants to organize one up at Wolf Lake. We’ll have to get the huts out of the way and won’t be able to go ice-fishing until the holes are frozen solid again. It’s the perfect setting for a scheme which should allow Uncle Peter to infiltrate their group.”
>
“Wait… why me?” Uncle Peter blurted and shrank inside his jacket. “I’ve been here for less than six months.”
“Which is exactly why Ben and the others will swallow the bait, once you start a fight with Adair.”
“Wait a minute.” I pushed myself off the fence. “Are you saying I’m playing a part in this as well? Why me?”
Rowan swung around and pointed his finger at me. “Because you already got into a fight over Ruth. We want Uncle Peter to challenge you as her guard, just like Ben did. But it needs to be realistic.”
“Realistic?” I gave a snort. “If you want this to look real, then choosing Uncle Peter was your first mistake. Someone like him would never challenge me.”
“Or maybe I would,” Uncle Peter snarled, his gloves bunching into a fist next to his wiry body. “You might be in your prime, Adair, but at least I can say I survived it.”
“Ridiculous!”
“Looks pretty realistic to me,” River said with a smirk on his face. “You’re already at each other’s throat, so what could possibly go wrong?”
“I don’t know.” I paced along the fence, hands inside my pockets. “After what happened at the store, I don’t expect Ruth wants to be put in this kind of situation again. Not even if it’s fake.”
“About that,” Rowan said, then cleared his throat. “She can’t find out. This needs to look realistic, and the fewer people know, the more likely we can achieve it. We can clear it up with her once it’s done.”
A bad vibe grew somewhere at the back of my head, pushing against my brain and triggering the onset of a headache. Ruth shouldn’t have to relive something like that.
“What do you want me to do, exactly?” I asked.
“The usual,” Rowan said. “You know… threaten to kill Uncle Peter. Tell him how she’s yours, and how you won’t let him mess up this chance your chieftain gave you.”
“But she isn’t mine, and Ruth won’t be happy about me blowing my role here out of proportion, and get all protective over her.”
“Well, this isn’t about what Ruth wants or doesn’t want. This is about me not getting killed.”
“We expect Ben or one of the others to reach out to you, Uncle Peter,” Max said. “Get comfortable with them and their cause. We need the name of every single one who is plotting against Rowan.”
“And I’ll execute them all,” Rowan said straight to the point as if taking a life didn’t rob him of any sleep.
“I don’t like it,” I mumbled.
“You don’t have to. It’s an order.”
I gazed over to Ruth who had finished her snowman and buried a twig on each side, a satisfied smile on her face. She hadn’t been distant these last two days, but neither did she hint she wanted to repeat what happened that night.
In the meantime, I couldn’t forget how good she felt with me between her legs, or how she had moaned my name. Even if it meant a punch-in-the-nuts rejection, I had to ask her for another try. Damn. The need to enjoy her once more surged inside me as if she had given me a taste of a most addictive drug.
I looked over to Rowan once more and gave him a nod. “Alright. But I can clear it up with Ruth after, correct?”
His answer came in the form of a grunt.
“And when is this supposed to go down?” River asked.
Max shrugged. “Ten days. Two weeks, maybe. Kind of depends on how quickly the holes freeze and how fast we can get it organized. Everyone will have to bring in their ice skates if they got any, so we can build a rental booth.”
“Mind if I take Ruth before that?” I asked and pulled my turtleneck a bit higher, hoping to hear a yes. “I promised I’d show her. Could even take her tonight.”
What I needed was time alone with her, instead of the fear of being found out licking the fine hairs along my neck at every second of the day.
“Hey, why don’t we all go and make it a thing?” River asked.
No! “Ehh…”
“Not me. I’d rather stay home and play some more with Rose,” Rowan said.
“Same here,” Max said and wrapped his scarf a bit tighter. “Hazel and I will meet early tomorrow, and I’ll get to shadow her all day while she works on patients.”
Uncle Peter swung his hand up, a huge grin on his face. “I’ll go. Haven’t been ice-fishing in years. Should be fun.”
“Awesome,” River said. “Ayanna will love to hang out with one of her own. What do you say, Oriel?”
Oriel shook his head and gave a quick wave.
Rowan gave a loud pat on his thighs. “Alright. We’re done here. Let’s get the women home before they start plotting against us husbands.”
“My wife would never do that,” River said and threw a wink into the group.
“I’ll collect mine,” I said and walked off, leaving the graveyard quickly behind me.
“Are you finally done?” Autumn hollered toward me, one arm wrapped around Peggy. “We got no more coffee, and it’s freezing out here.”
“Yup, all done.”
“But we don’t have to leave right away, do we?” Ruth asked, her eyes focused on lining up a small rock with the other eye of her snowman. “He still needs a hat and a scarf, or he’ll be cold.”
“I don’t wanna wait anymore,” Hazel said.
Max walked up and held one hand out to help Autumn out of the flatbed. “We can drop you off at home if you want. Or the clinic, if that’s what you prefer. You okay with that, Adair?”
“That’s up to her.”
“I’ll go with them.” Hazel jumped off the truck and brushed the snow off her pants. Then she walked over and gave a quick peck onto my head. “See you later, and don’t forget it’s your turn to cook tonight.”
“Now I feel sorry for you,” I said. “We both know I’m no longer the best cook at home. Ruth holds that title now.”
Hazel wrinkled her nose and stared me down, struggling the grin on her face into something more serious and her voice into a baritone. “You’re either the best, or you’re nothing at all, son. Now give me eighty push-ups while you recite the entire Stragemata of Frontinus.”
“Very funny… it’s Strategemata, though. And he never asked for less than two-hundred push-ups, bet you remember that.”
She gave me a lopsided smile and sent a quick wave toward Ruth. Everyone got in their trucks and drove off, some tires spinning, leaving me behind with Ruth and an unfinished snowman.
“What was that all about?” she asked and placed a small piece of oak bark as a nose.
“My dad used to say that.”
“You realize that’s not true, right?”
“What?”
“That you’re nothing as long as you’re not the best.”
I gave a shrug and pulled my fleece beanie off, ignoring how my stomach convulsed. “I guess he just wanted us to succeed, and make sure we had what it took to survive. If you’re not good enough to come out a winner, chances are you’ll come out dead.”
I carefully placed my beanie on top of the snowman, pulling the fleece over the compressed snow. Ruth gave everything another pat-down, smoothing his belly and adjusting his twig-arms.
“And the scarf?” she asked.
“I think I got something in my truck.”
I walked over and checked the cab, rummaging through boxes, bags, and the glove compartment. When I found what I had been looking for, I went back down to Ruth and dangled the red piece of rope in front of her.
“You won’t need it anymore?”
I shook my head. “Nah. Got enough rope at home, and this is just a leftover piece. By the way, I was considering taking you ice-fishing tonight. River wants to come as well, and Uncle Peter.”
She tied the rope around the snowman and draped one end over his chest, the other down his backside. “Hazel too?”
“I doubt it. Max mentioned they’ll meet early tomorrow, so I assume she’ll head to bed early.”
“How come you don’t have to be with Hazel all the time?”
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“Believe it or not, but the guys usually don’t bother her. I think even the worst of them understand we need a doctor. Besides, she’s promised to a chieftain now, and nobody wants to mess with that.”
“There… all done. Now you can take me home. And ice-fishing later.”
The way she had called my home hers filled my sternum with a gentle kind of warmth, which expanded and sent a bump against my ribcage. Everything inside me screamed to take her in for a kiss, my body crumbling underneath the weight of my desire to feel her once more against me.
I took a step toward her, and she turned around, her eyes gazing right up at me and her lips shoving across each other.
“Adair…”
At the sound of my name, every last fiber of constraint ripped, and I slung my hands around her slim waist. I placed one hand onto her perfectly shaped ass and pulled her against my growing boner. Then I kissed her hard and intense, showering her lips with that primal desire she had unleashed.
When I picked her up, her legs automatically swung around my waist. She kissed me back as I carried her to my truck, where I lowered her onto the narrow bench in the back.
“Pick up your hips for me,” I demanded.
I kissed the side of her neck and trailed my tongue along her earlobe, battling back questions and complaints and teasing out sweet, little moans instead. The moment she lifted her hips for me, I tugged her pants down enough for me to spread her legs open.
“What are you doing?” she asked, lifting her head and gazing down at what unfolded before her eyes.
Without explanation, I lowered my head between her legs and kissed from her pubic bone, down her slit, and all the way back to her bridge. From there, I let the tip of my tongue disappear between her folds, tasting my way toward her center.
She squirmed, letting her pelvis escape to the side only to bring it back for more. All the while, I let my hard cock press against the seat of my truck, rubbing myself against the firm cushion beneath. I wanted to take him out and push inside her, but I knew I would blow the moment her sweet, little cunt sucked him in, lasting less than I did the first time. That’s how much she tormented my body.